How to win the hearts and minds of your clients and your people

I find it hilarious in today’s transparent and connected world that people in marketing can treat internal communications like the poor relation. Often I tell peers that I’m working on a big internal communications project, and they’ll assume I’m writing a newsletter. Well if I’m honest, sometimes I am writing some sort of newsletter, but in the grand scheme of things, this is one of many vehicles of communications that is incredibly overlooked. However, there is so much MORE to good internal comms than newsletters.

Employee engagement is becoming more important to brands, as the influence their employees have as ‘brand ambassadors’ is starting to readdress the balance of power in an internal setting. If the messages you are putting out in the media aren’t the messages your office manager is reflecting in his online profile, then you have a problem. Employees are your best communications channels, use them, but please treat them respectfully, by being honest and open with them as early as possible.

Pride and belief are two words that have probably been used in so many Disney songs that they have started to lose meaning (especially to us British). However, giving your employees confidence and showing them that success is graspable can have an unbelievably positive impact on your commercial performance. If your internal communications can inspire, then it’s as powerful as a very large marketing spend.

So is empowering your leadership to take ownership of the message. Not all internal engagement is about ‘all company’ communications. It’s often the messages we help our management team to craft, or the presentations we help them create, which ensure those who lead teams are able to tailor the message to suit their own personal style (creating authenticity and authority), but without straying too far from the consistent themes we want our employees to hear.

And this is just the tip of the iceberg, I could waffle on for hours about the importance of internal communications, but actually there’s a big part of me that doesn’t want others to know just how interesting it is… more strategic and engaging projects for me!